What did we learn? 1990 OK A crisis: 78 days that changed lives -and perceptions

MONTREAL - Sunday morning, the people of Kanesatake and their supporters will march from Oka Park in a commemoration of the 20th anniversary of a 78-day standoff that cost the life of 31-year old Cpl. Marcel Lemay, closed the Mercier Bridge for weeks and cost Canadian taxpayers an estimated $200 million.

What did the Oka crisis prove? Have conditions improved for aboriginal peoples in Canada and, in particular, for the Mohawks of Kanesatake?

This year, tensions are building again as construction gets underway on a new condominium project on land at the edge of Oka village and the Pines, the forest at the heart of the crisis in 1990.

Kanesatake Mohawks claim this land as theirs, granted to them by the Sulpician priests when they persuaded the Mohawks to leave the island of Montreal in the 1600s.

We asked three of the key figures in the Oka crisis to talk about what happened in 1990, what should have happened, and to reflect on what has and hasn't changed in the treatment of aboriginal issues over the last two decades.

ELLEN GA BRIEL: KanesatakeIn the summer of 1990, an eloquent young woman emerged as the strong, unwavering voice of the Longhouse and the Kanesatake Mohawks sequestered behind the barricade.

Today, at 46, Ellen Gabriel is an artist, teacher, community organizer and as president of Quebec Native Women, a fervent and impassioned voice of her community and of aboriginal peoples across the country.

Gabriel's strongest memories of that summer are of stiflingly hot days spent trapped inside the treatment centre, marked by intermittent media scrums, and of the terror that persisted long after the SQ invasion.

"I remember the 11th of July, when we were being shot at by the Surete du Quebec and just being scared for a lot of people," Gabriel said.

"There was a sense of disbelief that this was happening. After a while, you do go on automatic pilot. You feel the urgency and the helplessness.

"We would see effigies being burned in Chateauguay. We heard stories of people who are obviously native being harassed, being beaten. We would hear the racist tone from Gilles Proulx on the radio. We felt safer behind the barricades."

Gabriel also saw how the provincial police were treating every Mohawk man who crossed their path. "Every man was a murderer to them, so they were beating them, denying them their rights. We were denied our fundamental human rights, food, clothing, medicine. So we were supposed to entrust our lives, put our weapons in the middle and come out and go on a bus with the Surete du Quebec.We were supposed to be happy with that?"

Personally, she has no regrets about 1990.

"We did nothing wrong. We only did what was within our rights to defend our land, to defend our lives."

Gabriel said she believes there is now a greater awareness of aboriginal peoples, their culture and identity than there was 20 years ago, and a stronger network of support from non-aboriginal groups.

But, she said, whatever small glimmers of hope she had after Oka that the government was prepared to forge a new relationship evaporated long ago.

"As far as the land rights issue in Kanesatake, and aboriginal peoples in Canada, we have regressed," she said,"In Kanesatake, we have the same problems. The condominium development that was accompanying the golf course expansion has just moved to another part of the community.

"We still don't have rights over our land. That's the heart of the issue."

Gabriel accuses Ottawa of a litany of missteps: "demonizing" people who stood up for their rights, marginalizing traditional Longhouse elders; failing to prevent the sale of any more land claimed by Mohawks to land developers; "influencing criminalization" and fuelling existing divisions by giving generous grants to groups that oppose the band council.

"Our people have always been oppressed and lived in poverty, or lived at the poverty line. It's only in recent times that we have some economic affluence," she said.

"If you dangle a carrot in front of people who have historically been oppressed, some will take it.

"Then (the government) can say, 'Look, here are the moderates, they are reasonable. The rest are radicals and they are just being unreasonable.'

"We say for those who want to embrace colonialism and all its attributes, go right ahead. The Creator made you to be a free-thinking person and to decide for yourself. But for the rest of us, leave us be."If they find our people who will do their job for them, then they can say, 'Look, we consulted, these people said it was okay.' It's a divide-and-conquer that is still very much the policy of government."When is it going to end? Colonialism should have died a long time ago."

Gabriel said people in Kanesatake were alarmed to discover that after the federal government bought property in 2000 in an effort to consolidate the Mohawk community, some portions of land had been sold off for construction of luxury homes.

"There is an area of the Pines that are there, we don't want it touched. They cannot touch that."

This time, Gabriel hopes it won't be necessary to stage a demonstration or put up a roadblock to protect their land.

"I just think that that is the only kind of moment when the government actually does something.

"That's a very terrible and dysfunctional way for a government to behave, that only when there is a barricade will they actually sit down and discuss.

"The relationship is broken between aboriginal peoples and government and Canadians, and it needs to be renewed. It's not enough to make an apology on residential schools. You have to change the status quo. You have to change how government acts. Right now they are acting as if it is business as usual and they can still trample on our rights.

"Look at Kanesatake, nothing has changed. We are still fighting to have access to our land. We are still fighting people trying to use the resources on our territory."

She sees this weekend's events -speaking events today at the local school, tomorrow's march -as a "gift" to children and young adults too young to know what the long, hot summer of 1990 was all about.

But, Gabriel said, it's also about telling Canadians that the struggle is not yet won.

"The government lied to you. They didn't settle this. We are still in the same boat."

JOHN CIACCIA: QuebecThere's a small plaque with a leather fringe over the desk in John Ciaccia's book-lined study, a gift from the Mohawks of Kahnawake. It reads "Aweriasowaneh," which means generous heart, a reflection of the respect the people of Kahnawake held for Ciaccia long after he left his post as Quebec's Native Affairs minister only days after the Oka crisis ended.

Now 77, Ciaccia crafted the pivotal James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and later served as International Affairs minister, travelling to more than 40 countries to sing Quebec's virtues and offer business incentives.

Yet it is the Oka crisis that he describes as a "life-changing experience," one which continues to shape his understanding of this country's painful, at times shameful and tempestuous, relationship with the people who were here first.

"I had never come across this kind of violent conflict over a matter that could have been so easily resolved.

"They were very rough times, 78 days, for the people in Chateauguay going to work.

"It probably created more tension and more wariness of the natives," said Ciaccia, whose own waterfront home was under police surveillance throughout the summer of 1990.

"It's not a nice way to live. At night, the helicopter would go by, you wouldn't see it, you just heard it."

In the weeks before the Surete du Quebec was summoned to break down the barricades and Cpl. Lemay was killed, Ciaccia had appealed to Oka Mayor Jean Ouellette and to the federal government in an effort to reach a peaceful settlement to the conflict over the plans to build a golf course on the pine forest at Kanesatake.

"It wasn't just an extension of a golf course. It was a real-estate development surrounding the golf course. That's where all the big bucks were. And that's why the mayor was persuaded by the other guys," Ciaccia said in an interview at his Lakeshore home, which sits on land that once housed a Hudson Bay trading post.

Two weeks before the SQ was ordered to dismantle the barricades that had been erected to block construction, Ciaccia said the mayor told him he knew there was no way the golf course would be built without bringing in the army, and agreed to give up on the project.

Ciaccia went to Ottawa to try to persuade the federal government to purchase the land for use by the Mohawks. "When I called (Ouellette) back, he had changed his mind."What exactly caused the mayor to renege on their agreement, Ciaccia can't say.

"Buy the land, stop the golf course. Sounds simple, eh?

"Had the mayor not changed his mind, I was sure we could have done something. But when he changed his mind, then I got worried."

Twenty years later is "not the time for recriminations or trying to re-do what could have happened," says Ciaccia.

"The positive aspect is that the golf course was not built on sacred native lands. That was key."

After that first deadly skirmish on July 11, all efforts were focused on preventing further bloodshed.

"One fatality on the first day was more than enough," he said, explaining the decision to go slow, even as frustrated commuters clamoured for the government to open the Mercier Bridge.

"If we had rushed to open the barricades, there would have been gunfire. Because the Warriors were well equipped, they were well armed, they had even built fortifications behind the barricades in case an army or a police force tried to force their way through.

"One of the reasons I was against the SQ attacking was that I knew there were Viet vets on the barricades. No police force is equipped to deal with guys with that kind of experience, those blank stares."I don't think the SQ was equipped to do the job. A police force is not an army."

Ciaccia remains puzzled by Ottawa's failure to intervene.

"If Ottawa had done in 1990 what they did in the year 2000, there wouldn't have been an Oka crisis. In 2000, they acquired the land (at the centre of the dispute) for benefit of the natives.

"That tells the whole story. It reflects that it could have been done before."

He also questions Ottawa's refusal to negotiate with the Iroquois Confederacy, which he saw as the moderate, respected and thoughtful antithesis to the bluster and machismo of the gun-toting Warrior Society. "You don't have to recognize their sovereignty. You recognize their existence."

Since leaving politics, Ciaccia has undergone two rounds of heart surgery, damage his doctor linked directly to the stresses of Oka, when the Native Affairs minister was working round-the-clock behind the scenes trying to craft a pact.

"Bourassa would say, 'John, go, sleep.' But I would go to bed and I couldn't sleep. You don't sleep when there is a helicopter hovering overhead."

Ciaccia believes Canadians are now more aware of Mohawks and their rights, claims and grievances, including those which have yet to be resolved.

"I don't think the natives' demands are unreasonable. It's a question of respect for them and respect for their culture.

"I could understand if someone would make outrageous demands. But they are not outrageous these demands. And if that is what is going to create harmony between both communities, I don't understand why they wouldn't do that. Common sense should prevail.

"Because to consistently ignore the grievances does not help, does not produce a peaceful and harmonious atmosphere."Unfortunately, Ciaccia knows from experience how hard it is to change attitudes and prejudices.

"We seem to repeat the errors of history, from time immemorial.

"Don't we ever learn from history? If we could just learn that lesson from history and learn to respect people who have different customs and different cultures. And also have rights. It's not even a question of defining the rights. The situation exists, we know it happened before, let's not repeat it."

TOM SIDDON: OTTAWAThe bookmark in Tom Siddon's copy of an account of the Oka crisis is a blurry photocopy of a newspaper headline dated 1902. "Oka Indians and priests at war over land claims."

Plus ca change.

It was February 1990 when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney went to Tom Siddon with a request to "trade the frying pan for the fire," switching from the Fisheries portfolio, a post he'd held for five years, to become minister of Indian and Northern Affairs.

Siddon, who had been a professor of mechanical engineering before he entered politics, readily admits he wasn't tuned to the intricacies of land claims and complexities of tribal relationships when the first flashes of lightning appeared in March, with a shooting at Akwesasne involving rival factions in the cigarette smuggling trade and rumblings from the barricade that went up on a dirt road in Kanesatake in March.

"Even if it hadn't been the first two months in office, I don't see how I could have found a wand to wave and make that problem go away," Siddon said in a telephone interview from his home in British Columbia's Okanagan valley.

"It was a very challenging time, but that's what helps make the trip of life unforgettable."

Siddon rejects the notion that the Oka crisis could have been avoided if only Ottawa had bought the land.

"It was more complicated than a simple land claim," he said.

Not only had the mayor changed his mind, but previous claims by the Mohawks had been rejected in 1986 on the grounds that they were unable to demonstrate "continuous use from time immemorial" -an impossible precondition, given the fact the Mohawks had only moved to Oka in the 1600s when the Sulpicians decided they'd rather have them off the island of Montreal.

In meetings with the band council and other local elders, Siddon soon realized there was no consensus within Kanesatake on who really spoke on behalf of the community -the elected band council, then headed by George Martin, the traditional Longhouse, or the Warriors, many of whom had arrived from Akwesasne and Kahnawake with their own, self-serving agenda.

Siddon said the golf course became a lightning rod for much larger issues of aboriginal sovereignty, governance and recognition of rights.

"On one side, you would have European traditions of peace, order, and good government, where everyone gets a vote. On the other, there is the culture of the Iroquois Confederacy and the Longhouse tradition, a matriarchal society with hereditary chiefs, passed down through the female line."

Beyond the barricades, there were other complications that summer.

"The Meech Lake accord had just collapsed, the economy was tanking and Parliament was closed up," Siddon recalled.

"Even if I had been able to get government to come up with something, there was no way it was going to resolved before the end of the summer."

In the meantime, the Surete du Quebec stormed in to dismantle the barricade. Exactly who ordered the raid has never been answered, but Siddon doubts Public Security Minister Sam Elkas or his lieutenants had the final say.

If Quebec was anything like Ottawa, Siddon said, "the buck stopped at the top."

"Mr. Bourassa did everything to prevent the situation deteriorating, but there was a lot of blindness in those times," Siddon said.

"Police arrived, people got alarmed, there were weapons, and someone shot a gun."After Cpl. Lemay's death, authorities and negotiators spent the rest of the summer desperately trying to defuse the situation as Indian bands across the country set up sympathy blockades on bridges, roads and railway lines.

Siddon remembers the angry response from some Conservative MPs when he went to Kanesatake in an effort to reach an agreement.

"The day I went into the Pines, I was perceived by some of my caucus colleagues as having sold out. They asked what a federal minister was doing going to sign an agreement with masked Warriors carrying AK-47s. I got a real blast from some of them."

After Oka, Siddon said, the federal government took major initiatives to redress land claims and other long-standing grievances with aboriginal communities across the country.

"I'm not saying anything wonderful can come out of something tragic and stressful, but over the next three years there was progress."

"There were more questions and a greater awareness of the unfairness which had been part of treatment of aboriginal peoples," notably the paternalistic approach that spawned the residential school scandals.

"We thought we knew better."

Yet he concedes that finding a lasting settlement for Kanesatake, where land and governance disputes persist, has proven difficult.

"It is heartbreaking to think that it is not totally resolved ... It's a sad commentary on a system that is supposed to fix problems."

Siddon left federal politics in 1993 when the Tories, led by Kim Campbell, were swept from office in a Liberal landslide.

Since then he has presided over the Water Stewardship Council in his region and taken an active role in climate-change issues, seeing himself, at 68, as "one of the elders of the world we leave behind."

He worries that sometimes, especially when times are tough, governments give the go-ahead to projects that require a longer, more thoughtful look.

"I have a lot of sympathy for the Mohawk people and for the inability for this issue to be resolved. Sometimes you have to be prepared to compromise and change your plans when there are basic human justice issues at stake."